


eszopiclone

by strato



Category: Carmen Sandiego (Cartoon 2019)
Genre: F/M, Insomnia, Swearing, chase can NOT figure out his own feelings, he is longing for his wif- partner, headcanoned zari's first name as nadia so that is just a figment of my thoughts lmao., lil short but what e v er, no graphic violence but brief mentions, okay so i'm going to break chase more than he already is bc i want to, poor guy, tags will be added as the story progresses, their relationship isn’t explicitly established but hey a little crushing is a little crushing, zari is pure salt okay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-06
Updated: 2020-02-17
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:48:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22592773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strato/pseuds/strato
Summary: He felt sick. Sick sick sick.Chase, tell me what you see in this bloodstain? Yes Mr. Psychiatrist,he thinks to himself,I see the face of a woman whom I let down. She's got this melancholic look on her face, but I’m guessing, because it was practically blank. She’s not staring at anything. She looks so pale that she blends into the sheets, and I can’t tell if it’s fear or death. I would like to visit her in the hospital - it's the least I can do after landing her there.
Relationships: Julia "Jules" Argent/Chase Devineaux
Comments: 18
Kudos: 42





	1. i. contemplation

**Author's Note:**

> so this is a piece that was suggested by seductively-eats-a-bagel on tumblr. forever thanks to them for giving my blank ass brain an idea lmao. 
> 
> finalized on mobile so there are most likely millions of errors hee hee. like halfway done with the second chapter

Chase woke himself up with a punch to the nearby headboard. It landed with a sickening crunch.

He didn't react. His gaze was trained straight ahead to the obscurity of his room, vision starting to make out some shapes. He took the first breath like a swimmer, up, up, for air. His chest rose and fell with every breath he took, he was aware of that.

His labored breathing rang in his ears besides the ringing - a raspy thing, one would think he wasn't a track star back in the day - and he brought back his fist, looking at the balled up hand more so out of instinct; he couldn't see shit. 

He wasn’t even scared at this point. Chase let out a shaky breath that had been dwelling in his chest as he began to steady his breathing, counting. His eyes drifted up to the ceiling and closed them. Chase remained there for a while, hearing nothing but the active nightlife from outside his apartment.

He hated calming down. It felt so unnatural to him.

Chase brought himself up to a sitting position, using his abused fist as an anchor, managing to make out the inky blotches of blood it left behind on the alabaster bedsheets. He couldn’t see the color. Everything looked like a silent film.

He felt sick. Sick sick sick.

 _Chase, tell me what you see in this bloodstain? Yes Mr. Psychiatrist,_ he thinks to himself, _I see the face of a woman whom I let down. She's got this melancholic look on her face, but I’m guessing, because it was practically blank. She’s not staring at anything. She looks so pale that she blends into the sheets, and I can’t tell if it’s fear or death. I would like to visit her in the hospital - it's the least I can do after landing her there._

The man rubbed his eyes with a groan, feeling the damp bedsheets under his anchoring hand. Hot tears produced themselves behind his shut eyelids, and Chase thought, crybaby, baby, _pathétique._

He’d done enough hollering, enough wrecking. He wouldn’t admit it, but he scared himself. It wasn’t normal. And then he heard Chief’s cardboard voice in his mind. 

“It’s normal. It’s normal to grieve. She is your partner, after all, and has been all the way from Interpol.”

It wasn't a new fact that Chase had trouble sleeping. Sleep was his dalliance, it only stuck around for a while, then left him reaching for the rattling bottle of his generic prescription of eszopiclone - lidocane-tasting sleeping pills that he'd even built a tolerance to. 

Yet this was different. He knew why. It was obvious.

Chase and Julia, obliviously connected to the hip as they were, went on a mission a few days ago. But to Chase, quite, it felt like a year since it happened. Ten, at that matter. There they were, two sitting ducks in the alley as they waited for the operative that would be sure to show up and strike a deal with another. ACME intel never let them down. Chief kept that standard, up on display like trophies and jerseys at a high school gym.

Bam, they catch the bad guy, Chief is impressed, and they go on to the next mission.

Chase knew deep, deep down that that was absolute bullshit. He learned from Interpol that you just don't _get_ the bad guy. It takes hours and days and weeks of pulling out your hair and killing yourself that you actually, barely get to catch a whiff of their trail.

Yet Chase didn't bring his grievances to light. Like they would listen. 

It had to have been a funny sight, two lambs in agent's clothing. Julia had a bad feeling about the mission to begin with, repeating it once or twice on their way to the designated stake-out spot. She was always one to listen to her gut, an aspect about her that Chief didn’t like at all.

The hologram herself had drilled it into Chase’s mind to ignore that kind of superstition. Don’t listen, don’t comment, don’t acknowledge. The clipped, almost strangely fearful way she said it that didn't quite fit her face made Chase believe that she, herself, had once been like Julia. It would far from surprise him.

And he listened.

Chase ignored Julia the whole time. He’d gotten into an argument with some pasty-faced agent the morning of - he didn’t remember why, it didn’t even feel real. He wondered if it was an excuse. That day he vaguely recalled snapping at any agent that got onto his nerves. He felt hot with annoyance. Feverish.

He didn't remember how long they waited. They snuck into the corner of the murky alley, hidden from view. Julia was nervous beyond belief. Normally Chase was astounded with how well she was able to keep her cool under any situation. Even when he’d yell two inches in front of her face, she didn’t even blink. Didn’t flinch. The woman was headstrong.

This time was different. She trembled like a little fawn, managing to lose the grip on her gas gun several times. Julia was absolutely terrorized, and she wasn't even trying to hide it. 

This perhaps scared Chase even more. Just watching her, he felt his whole body get kind of light in a way, his hands clammy as he unknowingly dried them on his coat. Their relationship was unwillingly symbiotic; he didn’t even know he was scared, feeding off her own fear, until he too was struggling to keep hold on his gear.

Chase kept trying to push it down. They were in a confined space, leaving him with little room to move around or distract himself. Julia spoke up. He knew that night that her voice was clear as day, but to recall it to his memory now was different. 

Chase remembered her vaguely saying something about going to scout around. Her voice trembled. Chase believed that she perhaps Julia just wanted to shake her trepidation off, he knew all too well what that was like from when he was a rookie. Julia sounded like she was speaking through a tube, then her small footsteps going across the gravel.

His body suddenly sagged, and he felt like he was in molasses. 

Chase was exhausted. He probably took an extra sleeping pill, he told himself. Imbecile.

The most vivid thing Chase recalled was closing his eyes and leaning on the brick wall for 4 seconds. Just a little bit, so his eyes wouldn’t be so heavy. Count them, one two three four. Common sense left long ago, out the door, halfway on its journey to Brazil. 

His throat was incredibly dry, his eyelids felt like sandpaper. Yet he remained with his head tilted back a few degrees, looking almost like a model for a clothing brand. Underneath the obscurity of his shut eyelids, he felt himself tilt side to side a little bit, balance thrown off by his lack of sight. 

He was snapped out from his rest with a scream, such a horrendous cry that it made his head hurt to this day. It pierced through the night like a fleet of fighter jets over the sky, he wanted to duck and cover, press his hands over his ears.

God, it sounded like something inhuman. If he were to have someone play the sound again, he would never in a million years guess that it belonged to a human being, let alone the wide-eyed woman that was his partner. It always, without fail, gave him chills. No, no, more than that, it made him feel like his spine was being ripped out, the sound was just that bad.

That kept him up at night. That was the reason Julia was in her dingy hospital bed, white as a ghost blending in with the covers, a porcelain doll belonging to the morgue. The whole fucking thing was his fault, throw the dart of blame!

She’d been ambushed by an operative while his guard was down, almost too fast to be considered possible. The sirens, the agents, everything else passed in a blur, and ever since, he’s had the same reoccurring nightmares.

Except this time, he sees Julia’s lifeless, mangled corpse on the ground instead of the still-breathing body. His stupid feet are stuck to the stupid ground. Every night, Chase prepares himself. And every night, he’s not ready.

It’s like some kind of twisted Olympics, he trains himself, stretches, jogs up and down. As a former athlete himself, he’s used to that - physically, at least. 

He always wakes up jerking or swinging one of his limbs, in the same futile fashion that he tried to fight off the operative. Rage. There were splintered knuckle marks on the headboard where Chase had punched it, never in the same place. It hurt like hell, but he didn’t feel it anymore.

Chase sits on the edge of the bed, his hand cradling his numb fist for the umpteenth time of the week. He’s so damn worried. Worried that Chief will pull him aside and tell him Julia actually didn’t make it. But what killed him the most was that it could have been prevented. Had he held her close, taken her hand, not closed his goddamn eyes for those four seconds? 

She’d still be sitting with him in their car, glasses alight with the reflection of her tablet she gazed intently at. Chase was so close to killing for her, bringing the world to a halt even for their comfortable quiet. Silence with her brought him more comfort than silence with his wretched self.

Then he asks himself, why, why was it so different with Julia? Hell, he'd made himself like a devil of a partner to her, why did he care? Why should he? If he was close to getting her back safe and sound, by hook or by crook, why did he think otherwise when she was here? 

_Why? Why? Why?_

In a brief moment of self-realization, the inspector felt it like a knife to his back. Chase had never, ever felt this worried with a coworker, or hell, a family member. It was all so weird, like an illness; he didn't know why he was feeling the way he was, but he knew that he was currently experiencing it. Going through the chills. The sweats. 

He realized how Julia listened when he was having a bad day, how her little hand occasionally would worm its way up to his back, rubbing in soothing circles when he was tense. How she offered advice on everyday things. How Julia wordlessly helped him with his work when it was too heavy. Chase rubbed his temples as the stinging on his hand reduced to a throb. He knew it just had to be something that partners did, right? The way he wanted more of that warmth, that comfort that was the glue to the shattered fine china of a man? 

Chase was so, so fucking egregious at figuring out his own feelings, but everything was there. And as much as he didn't want to admit it, there was no other way. He already knew. Chase didn't hate her. He _loved_ her. 

It was almost stupidly, childishly fantastical, something so saccharine and viscous it hurt his teeth. It felt like something he'd hear at a playground, a sticky-fingered child running up and down. 

Chase suddenly feels like vomiting, brings his knee up onto the mattress and puts his arm across it, nestling his face in the niche. An acerbic taste resides itself in his mouth. His face is warm. 

So, he figured it out. Got the golden star. He has feelings for Julia. But Chase starts to numbly come to terms with how distant the chances are that his feeling will be reciprocated. Julia would never. Especially not after how dirty he’s treated her. He feels that sinkhole in his stomach again. 

Chase scoffs at the thought, realizing how drastically inappropriate of a time it is to think about something like _romance_ at a time like this. What kind of a person is he? 

He hears the staccato rev of a motorcycle outside. 

Good question. Chase groans, shifting his head ever so slightly to look at the clock.

3:16 A.M.

“Cruel.” Chase croaks out after a while, his voice thick and raspy from not being used. Either that or from the dozens times he’s screamed bloody murder into his pillow. He doesn’t know at this point.

He still feels it, setting a hand on his hurting throat. Chase gets up, a sharp pain running through his legs as he ambled to the kitchen, fetching a glass of cool water from the sink. He thinks of the times he’s grilled Julia. For what? For doing her job? For being the best partner she could be?

Chase again thinks of her patience, her tolerance, the times he took her for granted. Each gulp of water was harder and harder to swallow, until he sets the crystal back on the countertop hard and holds his head.

Now he realizes why bland and sullen his twice-divorced supervisors seem. Romance comes to kick you on the asphalt and call you its bitch. 

He takes in a shuddering breath, trying not to produce the image of Julia, hooked up like a medical marionette to all those machines, bandaged up. Chase remembered forgetting to breathe at one point when he saw her. 

Chase is suddenly soaked back in that memory like bread in coffee; he can smell the antiseptic burning his nostrils, can feel the too-tight grip on his arm from another ACME agent. Wordlessly telling him to get the hell out of there before you go apeshit, there’s nothing you can do. 

He can distantly hear himself screaming, yanking his arm away from the gloves grip, running back to Julia’s bedside, before two bulkier agents produced themselves out of thin air and snaked their arms around his torso. It all fell like some kind of fever dream, the one that you remember within thirty seconds of waking up, then during the day you’re left grasping at the bits and pieces floating away. 

Chase is suddenly aware of the blood from his fist trickling down his arm in a river of liquid obsidian -he still can’t see the color - and sighs. He rips a paper towel from the roll and presses it halfheartedly against his wound. He’s not supposed to be at work for a couple of hours.

He’s up already. There’s not much to do. Oddly enough, mulling over himself gave him enough fodder to distract his mind from Julia. It hurt his head, his chest when he focused his thoughts on her. Chase’s eyes flicked to his keys hanging on the rack. Chase wants air. He needs to do something else, anything else, than go through this again. There was no way in hell he was going to return to his bed twice in one night. 

He wants run over some things. Pass brown blues that turn out to be nearby apartments. Maybe go twenty miles over the speed limit. Maybe thirty, the way he used to. Hell, forty, if he’s lucky.

A welcome distraction. 

Chase decides to go for a little drive.


	2. ii. preparation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay finally got around to finishing this long-ass chapter. apologies if it seems a little sparse in some parts, i had like a million ideas at once and just wanted to write them down lmao. have some julia today + a salty zari and sketchy chief

It was very much possible to get absolutely sick of seeing a painting of seagulls on a ceiling.

It was incredibly realistic. They were captured in the motion of flying, beaks open over the sea. They weren’t going anywhere at all. The more Julia stared at it, the more it made her reach her absolute breaking point.

Yes, and it was very much possible for Julia to get annoyed. Hard concept to swallow.

Julia sighed as she closed her eyes, feeling everything but tired. Her body felt like a sack of rocks, but she couldn’t bring herself to sleep in this unfamiliar bed, despite having been here for several days. She stopped bothering to count after the second or third day, knowing the more she counted, the worse her experience might get.

Julia’s eyes flitted over to the blurry window with blinds that were shifted downwards, letting some gray light stream in. If she had to take a wild guess, she would have to say it was close to six in the morning. The clock was up on the opposite wall of the room, but she couldn’t see that far without her glasses.

Julia gave a sigh as she stretched, the faint reminder of a headache thumping in the back of her head. She felt the slight twinge of a wound on her back that was already healed, but sometimes it still felt like a sunburn.

She was quite familiar with these types of injuries, from her glory days in high school as a volleyball player. Julia glanced at the wall as she reminisced - oh, how she flew on the court! She thought of her lucky right arm from when she’d hit the four as an outside hitter, as well as getting beaten and bruised from incoming serves. Not to mention ankle injuries. But she always bounced back. That was her thing.

Some pushed down optimism wanted to say that yes, she would bounce back. Julia would recover from this and be stronger than ever. She’d even, perhaps, be able to return to field work after this.

The woman shuddered. She’d probably need a month to be able to step out into the field to mentally recover from the experience.

Julia reached out to the nearby tray to pick up her neatly folded glasses. The formerly slow beeping of the heart monitor picked up as she began to move around more.

She propped herself up on the sterile hospital bed, her hands smelling like bleach and some other cleansing agent from touching the bedsheets. With her glasses on, Julia squinted to see the clock at the edge. The lights were still off, but she managed to make out the time.

6:07 A.M.

Julia leaned her cheek on her hand with a sigh and rubbed her other cheek, hand going behind her glasses and covering her right eye. She suddenly realized she was excruciatingly, terribly thirsty, eyeing the half empty water bottle on her tray along with several others.

She reached out and took several gulps until the bottle was empty, placing it back on her tray and reaching to down the other bottle without missing a beat. Thirst satisfied, she slipped a left hand going under her gown to her bandaged abdomen and trying, again, fruitlessly to scratch it under the cotton. If anything, it made it worse, but just the habit itself had an almost calming effect.

Julia knew that the nurse would come and make her rounds soon enough and change the wraps. The nurse was a soft spoken woman with gray, sad eyes and lines under them. Julia thought she had to be young, maybe in her residency, despite the lines of exhaustion under like creased pages of medical textbooks on the woman’s face.

Julia couldn’t help the thought that the nurse was perhaps the genderbent version of her partner Chase, bless his soul, who looked the equal amount of overworked and overmedicated. Julia missed him so much that it was insane; she wanted to just run out of the hospital to give him a hug, in her gown and barefoot, but instead she felt her nose sting and her eyes water. 

For the untracked amount of time she’d been in this damn hospital, piling up bills on top of bills, he hadn’t come to visit once. It felt like a petty thing; Julia wasn’t sure if she was mad he hadn’t shown up, or mad at herself, for expecting him to drag himself out of his apartment, the bombed thing it was - so she could see him.

Julia swore that she could sometimes smell the permanent smell of long-ago buried cigarettes and whiskey on his coat, the mentholic smell of his mints and cologne.

Julia sniffed and pulled up her pale blue gown, looking down at her bandaged waist. She had wraps all over her arms and legs, like an incomplete mummy. They weren’t as painful as when she first arrived - even under the cloud of strong painkillers, it hurt like hell. Tubes and needles stuck in her like a pincushion, and it was so excruciating that she wanted to writhe around and scream, but the strong sedation prevented her from doing so. She opened her eyes for brief moments to see the stretcher’s blankets soaked with blood.

Pain that extreme had never made its way to Julia. 

Maybe save for the time she broke her ankle during a volleyball game, but that was a story for another time. It still didn’t flex all the way.

The events of that careless day were still incredibly vivid in her memory, seared, marked, forever branded, and she couldn’t get them out. The brief moments she was able to sleep were the moments when she was on a stretcher again with a thick, discomforting intraosseous needle in her shoulder, pain ringing out in every corner of her body.

Julia lay back down on her side as she looked at the tubes emerging from her arm, intertwining. She traced them with her eyes, following the source, like those little mazes in coloring books. Whose kite is whose? She had stacks of those by her bedside for entertainment, but couldn’t bring herself to do something childish as that.

She was over being on the borderline of yanking the tubes out, now Julia just essentially accepted their presence. When you don’t have anyone to talk to in the lonely hospital room besides the nurse that reminded you all too much of what you’ve left, you established connections with non sentient beings.

Julia puffed out a breath as she closed her eyes, not having the intent of going to sleep anytime soon. Sometimes, when she shut them, she could see the faint, misty outline of Chase. It vanished after a while, but she tried to hold onto it for as long as possible.

She wondered, out there, if he was doing something stupid. Julia remembered the look of pure, concentrated pain on his face the day she was attacked, the day she was admitted from the hospital - she wondered if he remembered as well as she did. Chase’s eyes were wild as she lay in her bed, knuckles white his hands clenched around the doorframe. He was yelling something, but it was all incoherent French. Julia saw the look on Chase’s face, and by God, what a look it was. His eyes were saturated with visible guilt, everything, everything was. She wanted to say something, a goodbye, but the drugs were too much to do so. Two agents pulled him back with force typically used to wrangle a wild animal, and she could no longer look, she didn’t want to see anything anymore.

Julia turned on her other side and brought her knees up to her chest when her midsection started to hurt, her eyes trained on the dark gray sky outside the window. She heard the light tapping of the sharp, early morning rain on the window. It was incredibly relaxing. Julia felt her eyes grow heavy, hands slipping off her legs, maybe, maybe she’ll get some rest…

The door suddenly swung open with an abrupt strength that no nurse would ever administer, followed by the brisk clacking of heels on the tile. Instantly, Julia recognized the brisk foot pattern without having to look up, even before the tall woman made her way to her bedside. She frowned.

“Rise and shine, Agent Argent.”

Julia opened her gritty eyes and squinted, looking up at Agent Zari. Her lips were pursed, eyes narrowed behind her glasses with an anger to the world itself. The woman’s blonde hair was slicked up into its classic bun, not a single strand of hair misplaced. She was wearing the heavy ACME-issued raincoat, hands disappearing into her pockets. Julia picked up the faint smell of expensive designer perfume and wet asphalt on her.

Agent Zari lifted a gloved hand to her face to wipe a raindrop off her face, the waterproof foundation seeming to do its job quite well. She waited. _Waited._

Julia felt irritation bubble inside at her fellow agent’s absolute passiveness and she slowly propped herself up, arms sore from the movement. Julia cleared her throat.

“Agent Zari. A pleasure.” Julia waited a moment and tilted her head to glance up. “How… How did you get in here without an escort? To my understanding, it’s… it’s past visiting hours.”

Agent Zari let out a dry laugh, sharp green eyes looking at the wall behind Julia. “Frankly, I wouldn’t exactly expect you to remember what an ACME keycard can do, Agent Argent.” Her words were slow, like she was explaining a concept to a kindergartener, but it was the subtle meaning behind it that made Julia’s face flush with anger.

“Why are you here, Agent Zari?” Julia replied tersely. Julia knew how she got a kick out of seeing these kinds of reactions, she tried to have her expression as neutral as possible. Her left eye twitched.

Zari’s eyes flicked to Julia like she had just noticed her for the first time. “Chief wants to check in with her dearest and newest liability, Agent Argent.” Before Julia could reply, she continued. “She’s covering all your medical bills, if you haven’t heard.”

Julia stared at Agent Zari, mouth agape. “She’s.. why would she… _all of them?_

Zari pulled out the communicator pen, fiddling with it. Her hip was cocked to one side, while her other hand was still buried in her pocket. Her tinted lips were pursed. If she was trying to hide her envy, well, she wasn’t doing such a great job.

“The whole damn lot of ‘em. One of her rare, sporadic bouts of philanthropy. Took a big chunk out of ACME’s assets, but I don’t know what she was expecting, to be honest.”

Zari took a breath before Julia was able to say anything. “Julia.” 

Well, first name.

“Be wary. You’re a little… naive, let’s just say that.” 

The dark haired woman glanced up at her coworker with shock. She remained wordless, eyes wide, mind going at a million thoughts a minute. Why would Zari say such a thing? Had she gone through a similar situation? Why was Zari even helping her?

Most importantly, why did it make so much sense?

She should be grateful, but something… nagged at her. Chief wouldn’t do this just because. Zari was right in that sense. There had to be a catch. Chief did make her sign up for some kind of job-issued insurance policy, but she hadn’t nearly amassed enough to pay for all of this in the short amount of time she’d been with ACME so far. 

“Something’s gotta give. Probably ranging from extra shifts to pay deduction.” The blonde woman snapped Julia out of her thoughts.

“But why would-”

“Because ACME doesn’t just give its hard earned Benjamins to agents who’ve stumbled into little accidents at their own fault when they could easily pay the expenses themselves.” Zari snapped. There it was again. Julia should’ve known Zari’s little bout of affability would only last so long. Julia’s eyes narrowed and her fists clenched in her lap.

“How dare you stride in and act as if I’m the one here who’s..”

Julia stopped herself, watching as the woman dropped the pen she was toying with. Julia saw it upright itself, the only noise for the few seconds being the scratchy sound of the material of Zari’s coat as she folded her arms behind her back. 

A blue hologram produced itself from the pen, and a face that Julia has not seen in a while stared down at her. Her eyes were wide with concern with her hands folded behind her lower back.

”Agent Argent.” Chief breathed and took a large stride towards Julia’s bedside. Her expression looked equal parts worried and relieved. Chief glanced at her from head to toe, and set a holographic hand on Julia’s forehead. Julia felt the slight tingle of the hologram on her skin.

“Glad to see you in much better condition than before.” Chief said with her voice low. “It's been much, much too long. Your presence around the agency has been missed.”

Julia looked at her commander, eyes flicking to the pen as she thought of what to say next. So much so, she didn’t administer a proper greeting. Very much un-Julia of Julia. _The bills._

“Agent Zari informed me about.. about your decision to cover my expenses.” Julia spoke, hand rubbing the curve of her waist to and fro. She felt her ribs jutting out more than they usually did.

Chief gave a brisk nod, clearly not expecting that question. Were all her agents this hush-hush? “Quite.” She took a pause. “I did it because I want you to focus on getting back to your best. ACME has the resources.”

Behind her, Agent Zari shifted her weight from one leg to the other audibly.

Chief gently set a hand back on Julia’s blanket, the small woman glancing up quickly in surprise. “I don’t want you to be stressed by something like this. I feel personal responsibility for what happened, for sending you like that, I…”

Chief broke herself off with a sigh, folding her arms with her gaze trained to the floor. “You’re one of the best agents we’ve got, Julia.”

Second first name.

“I want your focus to be back on getting well.” Chief continued. ”Stress will only hinder that progress.” Julia was surprised to see that holy hell, her expression, the way she averted Julia’s gaze, her posture - all looked genuine. 

Julia didn’t want to know if that was a good thing or a bad thing. It’s a spectrum; you either lie so much that you learn to act genuine, or don’t lie at all and _are_ genuine.

Chief gave a melancholic smile, like a withered, frozen rose. “I want you to relax, Agent Argent. You’ve just been through a traumatic event. It’s the least I can do.” Her voice was weary.

Julia finally spoke after a while, mouth dry. “I am grateful for that, Chef. I really am.” She looked up at the hologram that reminded her of a doting grandmother, maybe just in this moment - for a split second. The rain outside began to intensify.

“Good. Good. Like I said, once you’re out of here, I want this to be the least of your worries.” Chief bit her lip and placed her chin in her fingers. “Can’t exactly say the same for your partner, though.”

She was beating around the bush, Julia knew it all too well. Yet at the mere mention of Chase, she felt her chest start to constrict, panic rising up thick in her throat. Her mouth opened slightly as she struggled to find words, form coherent sentences - her earlier distractions melted away and she remembered him, her dear insufferable partner, how could she forget?

Chase didn’t jump off the edge of a pill bottle, did he? God forbid, he made himself a bitter cocktail of those sleeping pills and alcohol and went for a little spin in his car? 

No, if he was dead, it was her fault, her fault, she should have stayed with him that day, taken his rough hand and weeped into his chest, kiss the damn man, anything, anything-

“He’s okay, right?!” Julia sputtered out like she had just emerged from the tarry fingers of a nightmare, noticing the slight movement of surprise the hologram and Zari did.

She brought the thin cotton blanket up to her face as she held it tight, sensing the strong smell of sanitizer. The worry pooled in her stomach like a flood, building up in those few seconds, Julia feeling nauseous. She was silently freaking out at so many of the possibilities that could have occured, and Chief hadn’t said a single word yet, lord have mercy on the poor woman.

Chief opened her mouth and then closed it as she looked like she was fishing for the right words, all while Julia shriveled before her eyes. She looked like she was trying to say ‘he died’ without actually saying ‘died’, which, unbeknownst to Julia, was inherently true in a sense.

“..He’s troubled.” Chief spoke after a minute or so, Julia feeling herself relax and stop shivering like a cold little bird. Why was she like this? A small period of silence and she’s suddenly losing it, scared, this was not the woman she knew _herself_ as. Not before the accident. Not before she began to see Chase, the bumbling fool, as more than a partner, lying awake in her bed at night with eyes she could barely keep open. 

Late-night thoughts. But were they really?

They had to have been. They were nothing more than her mind stumbling out of a club at 3 A.M. and getting its fill on hole-in-wall street tacos.

Which, the duo had done maybe once or twice after a long, hungry stakeout - Julia could still smell the sizzling _al pastor_ waking her up during unholy hours of the night, and the taste of the ice cold _horchata_ on the roof of her mouth. Minus the visiting a club, of course.

“Frankly, I haven’t seen this before in an agent, Miss Argent. Sure, the occasional sleepiness, but he comes into work like he’s been chewed up and spit out by the world.” Chief pressed on with flourishing hand movements, in a tone that was hard to tell if she sympathized with him or wanted to kick him out of the metaphorical class.

“He falls asleep like a goddamn student in English class the moment he gets a chair and a desk to work on.” Zari spoke from the back in that ever so _helpful_ manner she was known for, nose wrinkled up in disdain as she took a couple steps. “And _drools_ , too.”

Julia bit her lip as she glanced at the hologram, then to her coworker that really did turn out to be a full-on statue of salt, despite doubting it for a brief moment. She believed one more than the other, in the reverse order. After what Zari had told her, she couldn’t look at Chief with the same revere that was present before. Once the woman had been honor, now she was doubt. 

Doubt that she could be meaning well and telling the truth, doubt that she could be crossing her fingers behind her back and will expect a favor from Julia later on, ranging in severity..

Yet Julia was sure that the two were on the same page. Chase was already shattered ceramic; it wouldn’t take much for him to crack again. But like a broken vase, she began to piece everything together. And she didn’t want to know. But she was Julia, she uncovered puzzles. It was what she did. Even when it came to someone as herself.

“And all of this is because..” Julia pushed her glasses up and swallowed thickly. “He feels responsible for what happened. He feels it was his fault that I wound up where I am.”

“On top of not having you with him, that would make almost too much sense.” Chief folded her arms behind her back with a nod. “Agent Argent, the man cares for you.”

_And I for him. Almost too much._ Julia thought with a numb scratch at her shoulder. _But you should know that already. Or do you?_

Zari’s heels clicked on the polished floor as she made her way over, stealing a glance at Julia as she pulled some surprisingly crisp papers on a clipboard out of her almost too-big coat. The blonde woman showed them to Chief, who read them briskly and gave an approving nod.

“As much as I enjoyed our little heart-to-heart, Miss Argent, I’m overjoyed that you’ve been formally cleared.” Chief replied with a newly-painted on smile as Zari handed Julia the clipboard. The latter took it slowly and brought it to the weak light that streamed in. She noticed a pen at the top. Regular, of course.

Discharge papers. Julia gave a little gasp as she skimmed over the hospital’s logo at the top, her summary, including the headache inducing amount of boxes she was going to have to fill in. She flipped it over and went to the next page, with still more and more boxes. At the end was Agent Zari’s signature, cramped and neat, but she managed to make out _Nadia Zari._

Had it really been that long? Over a week? Had it really been that long of eating hospital food that had seen better days, being guided on how to walk in the hallways again, wallowing in the bed with nothing but her own guilt to keep her company?

Julia felt her mouth dry out when she realized that perhaps, this too is how Chase felt. Lost and with no one but his own self, and maybe a painful reminder of one another. God, it sounded to her like some kind of cheesy soap opera.

For the first time in a long time, she laughed. Julia didn’t know why. It was small and tittering, but it was a laugh. It felt so good.

Poor Devineaux; how miserable it was to be like this.

Julia was finally going to go back. Maybe not field work exactly, but it was something. She was more excited for the prospect of finally getting to see her partner, save the man, and work with him again. Side by side. She promised to herself that they’d go out and get street tacos the first night they were together again.

“I always like to save the best news for last.” Chief chimed with a small smile.

And with that, she was gone.

Zari bent down to pick the pen up. Julia wasn’t very surprised to see the blonde woman’s face cold and expressionless again as she peered down at Julia with those unnerving eyes. She held the pen in her grasp.

Her eyes said what her lips couldn’t: _what do you see in that man?_

Julia wanted to burst out into laughter. So hard, they’d drag her back to the hospital and into the psychiatric ward. She wanted to break the window with the vibrato, laugh at both herself and the blonde woman with the face of a hawk.

Julia was going to go home. Sleep for a thousand years in her bed.

No, that was a lie. Maybe 3 hours at most.

No longer would Devineaux’s face be solely an imprint in Julia’s memory, no longer would he be an intangible figment that she’d smell the ghost of. Julia would finally get to feel his coat a million times to make sure it was real. 

No longer would she long to hear his honeylike accent say ‘Ms. Argent,’ over and over and over. Julia wanted to curl her arms around his broad frame and rock himself best as one could with their height difference, soothe the troubled soul of a man. Every minute from now on was a minute closer from being with her peppermint sugar-smelling partner.

The worry about the bills flew off like if she stood her head out the window of a car going down the PCH. Chief could pay them and she could add interest, whatever. For the first time in a long time, Julia didn’t care about anything, about impending payments, about the future, about the past. Once they were reunited again, Julia wasn’t sure what they would be, if he even shared her feelings: partners, casual flings, friends, maybe more. 

Julia was surprised herself. It was probably the only time she thought like this, even felt like this. She glanced up at Agent Zari, replying with a hidden message in her own eyes.

_I’m not sure._


End file.
